Map shows biggest snow wimps (yes, we’re one of them)

A mere 2 inches of snow brought Atlanta to its knees this week — and adding insult to injury, the city has become a bit of a laughingstock on Twitter because of it.

Well, it may take a little more snow to grind Seattle to a halt — but not much more.

On the social media site Reddit, a contributor with the user-name arubetosky has created a map that shows how much snow it takes to close down schools across the U.S., county-by-county.

King County is not in the wimpiest category, reserved for places where less than 1 inch — or even just the prediction of snow — will shut down the schools. But the map indicates that we’re just one notch above that: it takes between 1 and 3 inches of snow here. And we’re the northernmost county in the nation in that category. Folks are even a little tougher in Snohomish County — it takes between 3 and 6 inches of snow to keep the kids home from school there.

The data for the map came from a variety of sources, and the map creator has explained more about it here.

About this blog

Gene has been a news librarian at The Seattle Times since 2002. He is a native of New Jersey, and earned a Master’s Degree in Library Science from Rutgers University. Before coming to The Times, he worked for the Orange County Register and the Baltimore Sun.